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KOREA

B-TECH FOR

VITRO

functional clothing design

Design Factors:

• Research & Analysis

• Building Values

• Design Language

• Collection Design

• Graphic Design

• Colors Palettes

• Textiles Design

• Technical Specification

• Follow up on Prototyping

• Final Product

The Vitro B-TECH line, where B stands for Badminton, is a special technical line created by b-on creative for Vitro to provide a new standard of performance for pro-players in this sport.

The line was originally conceived in 2012 and had seen several Design Languages evolution  trough the years, the Double-Smash Design Language here illustrated  represents the second major advancement of the line and was first launched for the SS/2015 season, subsequently evolved in 6 more collections until the FW/2017.

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Badminton is a frantic sport incredibly fast in its exchanges and that requires a lot of quick moves and jumps, the level of sweating and comfort, in the upper body movements especially, are taken to a critical point for the players and drivers for the new design b-on would create.

Plus this is an Indoor Sport, a sport that for that reason loves to wear bright and colorful, a motive that has been like that for the past decades and quite defines the apparel design for this category.

Typical Badminton outfits, taking for example the shirt, consists in a very traditional approach to the design, with traditional Polo-shirt type of structure  only with a jumble of  large  colorful print outs  all over it. Those final result for b-on creative were   outdated either  in terms of design either in terms of  functionalities, what we want to achieve instead was a totally new way of design and make badminton outfits.

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The B-TECH line was characterized by the exclusive use of Hi-performances Textiles and a new approach to the design and structure of the Badminton's garments, all put together with a unique and  new B-TECH design identity.

The paneling to create the various styles of B-TECH   has always a mix of double mesh type of fabrics and 4 ways stretch Spandex textiles, taking great care to have always the mesh type  surface over the area with higher sweat ratio.

In addition to that the B-TECH textiles has a moist absorbent feature that quick dry out the sweat from the skin, it has  as well a cooling effect refreshing the user and an antibacterial guards that protects the skin of the player.

Unique to this line was  b-on creative idea for a new way to keep players hand dry during the game; developed for the line's pants and skirts the Dry-Smash   is a special lining for the  pockets that allows to remove sweat  from the hands and provide the athletes with better grip and control  over their rackets.

The Dry-Smash   is basically  a  micro-towel  that the player can use  any time of the game  just putting his/her hands in the pockets and rubbing his/her hand over the micro-towel surfaces..

It is made with the thinnest Terry type of fabrics and laser-cut as patches in order to maintain breath-ability in the area; the patches are assembled  by welding to avoid over-structuring with stitching that area.

All items in the collections are designed to be assembled with elastic stitching and elastic welding; laser cuts have been often used to create  micro holes patterns where more necessary  was the need for  heat release.

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The B-TECH is though for performance and the design  language b-on developed for this line was meant to communicate its technically higher standard trough a unique approach to the design.

The Double Smash concepts is defined by  Tension and Asymmetry in the design of each item, with very energetic gestures in terms of design that always raises up towards the highest point of attraction.

 

The design pulls up towards the Power-Shoulder, the smashing device. It gives a sense of a invincible action and quick dynamism  that despite its asymmetry maintains, thanks to the design fast intersection of tension  lines, a very technical look indeed.

The use of color accents and minimal graphic supports and underlines this overall movement of the design toward the point of highest energy.

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In terms of color especially the collection represents a trailblazer for the badminton category, creating a trend after followed by Vitro main competitors. The color layout aims toward a new visual definition of the Badminton outfit, no more characterized by wacky hi-contrast print-outs as done in the past but defined by its own special structure, using color tones that are technical and concentrating the hi visibility accents within the functionalities of the garments. Part of the work b-on developed  to distance B-TECH from the others was as well a new type of  Melange Fabrics called the Metal B-TECH designed by b-on and specially made only for the B-TECH line that has a unique subtle shiny metal reflection built in  its yarn.

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The neck design also represents one the major challenge and achievement for each collections designed, making B-TECH again the first line to completely move away from the traditional Polo-neck type towards newer and more comfortable designs.

b-on creative have been designing each year collections SS and FW in  single project, we always started with a phase dedicated to research and analysis, collecting latest inputs from the users and the market and then rapidly we move toward the conceptual phase of brainstorming ideas and sketching initial directions in order to begin understand which strategy would best suit to the goal of the B-TECH line.

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We define a large number of initial concepts, that is essential in our process to help ourselves to investigate their potentials; with the use of dedicate mood-boards for each concepts then  we begin the critical screening and the process of selecting and bettering the remaining ones until we have 3 clear strong options available to present to our client.

Before  discussing the design language with the client thou we develop a mini Collection for each of the 3 concepts, each mini collection with 3 different color palettes and initial graphic elements; that allows us to visualize and start exploring the design language potentials and of course to visualize for the client the possible outcomes of their selection.

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Once Double Smash Design language was pick among the 3 we moved quickly towards the second phase of the work, initially adjusting the main design concept with new feedback and then with a large activity of sketching for each of the final Styles  belonging to the  collection (between 18/22 Styles per collection). Several design concepts are developed for each of the styles and the most appealing are refined step by step, reviewing textiles and finishes, and once clearly defined in its details and approved for the  final collection each new design is technically drawn in vectorial form.

Color palettes for the  seasons and the overall  collection color outlook are as well designed and reviewed over different steps of development together with the graphics elements  and eventual other applications.

At this stage of the design work we initiate the production of all the specification for manufacturing of each item taking great care of communicating clearly  each new design details and assembling; subsequently we start the collaboration with prototypists to create the first samples of the whole collection.

All the  samples are reviewed for fitting and design and improvements are defined over the real garments, colors graphics and other minor details are reviewed with following samples in a process that repeat  itself 3 times until the collection is finally ready for launch.

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